Like herself, Cohen finds a legion of late bloomers

October 9, 2007|By Katy O'Donnell The Baltimore Sun

A self-diagnosed "serial dater" who always pictured herself married with children by the time she hit her 30s, Amy Cohen was shocked when, in her late 30s, she lost her boyfriend, her job and her mother in the same year. She decided to write the memoir The Late Bloomer's Revolution because "I needed my book when I was going through it myself."

"One of the things that I really struggled with at that time was my identity," said the former Spin City writer and current dating columnist for the New York Observer. "My book is about discovering yourself when all those things you expected don't happen."

It was after one particularly nasty breakup that Cohen taught herself to ride a bike - at 35. A true late bloomer in every sense, she tells women looking for love to "never stop believing, but realize that it might not fit your time frame."

She's gotten hundreds of letters from women who identified with her book. "What I found out writing my book is there are so many women like me," she said. "It's not easy to be a woman who hasn't made the same choices as everyone else. It's, 'You're attractive - what's wrong with you?' Because the assumption is, if you're single at a certain point, you must be a psycho, or difficult. Which isn't the case."

So does she agree with Publishers Weekly that she's poised to take over Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell's "legacy as the reigning observer of Manhattan dating life"?